Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from fermented rice. Sake is light in color, is noncarbonated, has a sweet flavor, and contains about 14 to 16 percent alcohol. Sake is often mistakenly called a wine because of its appearance and alcoholic content; however, it is made in a process known as multiple parallel fermentation, in which a grain (rice) is converted from starch to sugar followed by conversion to alcohol. Special strains of rice are precisely milled to remove the outer layers, a process that reduces the grain to 50 to 70 percent of its original size.